At Marie Curie, we are closely aligning our research, policy and public affairs strategy and plan with our organisational vision and mission.
Our plan
We aim to develop work programmes across Research, Policy and Public Affairs teams which contribute to change against the key impacts the organisation is seeking to deliver in closing the gap in end of life care. This includes our external research funding schemes as well as activities of our internal research and evaluation teams, and teams who deliver research in our Places.
Focus for research and policy work
To support closing the gap in end of life care, the focus for our research and policy work will be on:
- Evidence-based engagement with palliative and end of life care across the four UK nations. We will develop our commissioned research grants programme and centres, internal research activities, and other impact-focused research grants to address priority issues for policy and practice. This includes a focus on involving people with lived experience in all we do.
- Evidence-based engagement with regional and local decision makers for palliative and end of life care policy and practice. We will further develop our research practitioner network to support the delivery of research studies in Marie Curie services in our Places across the UK.
- Supporting development of excellent, evidence-based palliative care services both within and beyond Marie Curie, including through robust evaluation. We will expand our evaluation activities to ensure that our services continue to be designed using the best possible evidence. By knowing what works and doesn’t, Marie Curie can deliver services that maximise impact for patients, people close to them, communities, healthcare professionals and the NHS.
- Identifying future end of life care needs. We will build close relationships with researchers across the UK, including continuing our support for research fellowships; ensuring the James Lind Alliance priorities, aligned with our organisational strategy, help to inform our future research activities and investments; re-commissioning research centre support, with a particular focus on supporting the delivery of Marie Curie’s priorities and strategy; and actively exploring opportunities to develop the evidence base around the use of new technologies in the delivery of palliative care.
- Closing the gap in end of life care by addressing inequities in palliative and end of life care. We will continue to have dedicated policy and research capacity focussed on delivering equitable palliative and end of life care; and require our researchers to explicitly set out how they are considering equity through the course of their work.
- Improving public engagement with death and dying. We will continue to support work on death literacy and public attitudes to death and dying.
We will continue to publish outputs from work delivered as part of our 2021-2025 research, policy and public affairs strategy, where possible feeding in evidence to the above areas of focus to support our work to close the gap in end of life care.
